OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/15270/Inside_Windows_Vista_s_New_Image-Based_Install_Process
Exploring the Future of Computingen-usCopyright 2001-2018, David Adamsadam+nospam@osnews.comSun, 18 Feb 2018 05:56:52 GMThttp://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gifOSNews.comhttp://www.osnews.com
REhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145712
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145712I remember them talking about WinPE in 2003/4, saying that a Vista install would take 13 minutes.

An interesting comment was that WinPE would allow distributers like Dell to use SOAP to allow users of a website to customise the software on their machine order, and in the factory a web service could be preparing a WinPE image for them that includes their software selection ready for the machine.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:26:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Kroc)CommentsAntitrust paradisehttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145713
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145713The antivirus/security market invaded by OneCare, the imaging market overtaken by WIM, and the music market taken on with URGE: where does it end?

Microsoft is taking on their rivals in so many markets with Vista it's unbelievable!Edited 2006-07-24 11:27Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:26:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (davidiwharper)CommentsRE: Antitrust paradisehttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145722
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145722But failing with most of them:

Urge has worse restrictions than iTunes, Urge has no podcasting support, no audio books, the UI is still cluttered, it's no iTunes/ITMS. They're hardly competing at all.

Most features in Vista are already in OS X, and they dropped WinFS, they dropped file Meta data (except for Office files) and dropped just about everything revolutionary they promised for the OS. The only thing I can see that they've delivered on is Avalon.

Tiger is a lean, fast and slick OS, Vista is a hemouraging absoraloff comparable to OS X 10.0. MS have several years and several revisions to go through before they get Vista anywhere near what they originally promised.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 12:01:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Kroc)CommentsRE[2]: Antitrust paradisehttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145745
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145745well urge is just a service, basicly its ITMS.
lets see what microsoft comes up with as a software part of zune...Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:06:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (hobgoblin)Commentshmm, strangely interesting...http://www.osnews.com/thread?145748
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145748that this comes from microsoft realy suprises me.

it sounds all to well tought out...

now i just wish they would get that beast (vista) down to size, it seems all to expensive in terms of computing resources just for a os...

and im not sure i like the comment about it still requiring all those extra technologys like WDS and whats not. they will require me to use a windows server to deploy over networks? sorry but no thanks. i can pull that of using linux and a ftp server running on just about any os...Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:11:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (hobgoblin)Commentslooks familiarhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145752
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145752"im not sure i like the comment about it still requiring all those extra technologys like WDS and whats not"

Looks like talking about openness and cross-platform, but doing the same old lock-in dance with Vista as they tried to do all along their historic path.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:22:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (gustl)CommentsExcellenthttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145754
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145754Microsoft inventing nothing new and copying technological ideas from the open source community, and independent programmers.

Can they invent anything, or simply pool ideas together and sell them for a fee?Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:39:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (stlpcsolutions)CommentsFrom APC magazine pros/cons senselesshttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145758
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145758"Also, Vista is hardware-agnostic"

What??

"All WIM images feature one of two compression technologies &#8211; LZX or XPress. LZX gives greater compression when space restrictions are an issue, and is the option of choice when installing from fast media like a DVD.
For CD/DVD-based installs, WIMs can be split into multiple SWM files for media spanning. XPress is a faster compression algorithm, and gives the best performance when deploying the image across a network."

Let me understand. You use a slower but good compression algorithm to store an image in media like a DVD where you clearly have enough room, and a faster but not so good compression one when installing from a network?Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:54:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (sbenitezb)CommentsRE: From APC magazine pros/cons senselesshttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145765
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145765"Let me understand. You use a slower but good compression algorithm to store an image in media like a DVD where you clearly have enough room, and a faster but not so good compression one when installing from a network?"

Yeah, actually, you do.

As someone who does OS installs from a LAN and from CD/DVD media on a regular basis, I can tell you that the major bottleneck these days is media read time. Network installations are generally MUCH faster, because they're being read from a hard disk and sent over a fast local link with more than enough bandwidth. Reading from an optical disk is quite a bit slower.

Therefore, it makes sense to use XPress for network installs (since read time is cheap), and LZX for CD/DVD installs (since it isn't).Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:09:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (natbudin)CommentsRE: Antitrust paradisehttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145767
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145767OneCare is not bundled with the OS and is a pay-for service.

Windows Photo Center is basically stuff that XP could already do, just more polished.
They can't get in any trouble for this as there is no advanced application coming bunlded with Windows for free.

And Urge is MTV's music service, not Microsoft's.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:10:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (CPUGuy)CommentsRE: Antitrust paradisehttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145770
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145770Also, WIM is nothing new, you have been able to deploy Windows over a network for many many years.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:12:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (CPUGuy)CommentsWell they would have to speed it up a bithttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145772
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145772If the size of the install being banded around is anything to go by.
The downsize of this is a great reduction in flexibility OOTB leading to more post install work and reboots, glorious reboots.
Until we see exactly what gets shipped I guess we will be left thinking that EVERYTHING will be on 'C'. This is not ideal but as the great god microsoft says this is how it must be then that is how it must be...
I expect there will be a lot of scope post install for 'fixing' the OOTB restrictions & Limits.
Personally, I would like to be able to have "Program Files" in its entirety on a separate drive by default but I'm probably in a minority of 1 here.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:19:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (shotsman)CommentsKeeping up with the Jones'http://www.osnews.com/thread?145773
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145773It's already been pointed out that this approach is
something they've "borrowed" from the open source sector which has being doing the same thing for a decade or more.

It's also been pointed out that MS is also making several obvious mistakes in the implementation (perhaps that's innovative).

But the part I'm missing here is why they would want to emphasize that they had a lousy approach before and are trying to learn from the open-source crowd. A lot of people have thought that MS has had problems "innovating" for quite some time -- but right now, MS has a problem in that Wall Street is starting to feel the same way. MS stock is not exactly a hot property ( http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=2y&s=MSFT&l=on&z=m&... ).

MS desperately has to avoid seeming like a wasteful bureaucracy making slap-dash attempts to keep up with "hobby" programmers. Vista and the new Office have got to become unnaturally compelling products with reasonable prices or they're sunk. Stuff like this appears to the suits as a concession that the F/OSS crowd might be more savvy and innovative than old MS (whether tech folk believe it or not).Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:22:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (SpasmaticSeacow)CommentsRE: looks familiarhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145777
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145777this is such a non-issue, it's not even funny. If you're installing enough Windows to really use WDS, you probably have a Microsoft rep and can afford to purchase and admin a single Windows server for deployment purposes. You already need an admin to prepare the images and keeping Server 2k3 updated and working is not a very daunting task.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:32:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (PlatformAgnostic)CommentsImage based installhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145788
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145788I look forward to seeing the final shipping version of Vista. It will be interesting to see what can be added and what can be REMOVED from the image and still have a stable product.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:26:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (bolomkxxviii)Commentscoolhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145810
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145810thats interesting, glad to see MS can still do things differently, sometimes Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:09:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (deanlinkous)CommentsRE: Antitrust paradisehttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145812
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145812"The antivirus/security market invaded by OneCare, the imaging market overtaken by WIM, and the music market taken on with URGE: where does it end?

Microsoft is taking on their rivals in so many markets with Vista it's unbelievable!"

Okay, I'll bite. What does WIM or URGE have to do with Microsoft, except for the fact that the software was written for use on windows? These are not Microsoft companies. OneCare is Microsoft, but not the other 2.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:12:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (DrillSgt)CommentsRE: Excellenthttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145815
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145815"Microsoft inventing nothing new and copying technological ideas from the open source community, and independent programmers.

Can they invent anything, or simply pool ideas together and sell them for a fee?"

What other OS uses this technique to install? To my knowledge neither OSS or Mac OSX installs this way. I could very well be wrong, but there is always an installing packages message , not a decompressing message. The message of "Copying the install image" in a Linux install only copies the GNU tools required for the install, not an actual image.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:18:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (DrillSgt)CommentsUbuntuhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145838
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145838What other OS uses this technique to install? To my knowledge neither OSS or Mac OSX installs this way

The latest ubuntu version does this. It has a install image that is copied file by file to your destination partition by a python script. The image is a 600 MB file placed in the CD, but with kernel help it shows to the world as a filesystem tree that you can mount and read.

Actually, Ubuntu goes even further than Vista. Ubuntu uses that same image to run a CD-live - a cd live that logs you in a standard gnome session. The same image containing a standard Ubuntu install is used to run a CD live and to copy a Ubuntu install to your hard disk. Once the installatin is finished, it removes in your destination system (via apt-get) some packages that were preinstalled in the install image to implement the cd-live funtionality and that are not need anymore once the system is installed. Simple and clean. It rocks.

This also allows you to partition your disk using the same (graphical) tools you'd use in a standard ubuntu system once it's installed. No more crappy embedded partitioners. No need to write a partitioner for your installer. No duplication of functionality. You also can connect to the internet and google something that you may need, using firefox. Or you just can read your favourite web pages while the system installs, or play a game or listen to music. I just love this, I hope other distros do the same in the future.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:59:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (diegocg)CommentsRE: Ubuntuhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145840
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145840"The latest ubuntu version does this. It has a install image that is copied file by file to your destination partition by a python script. The image is a 600 MB file placed in the CD, but with kernel help it shows to the world as a filesystem tree that you can mount and read."

Great, thanks. That explains why I have not seen it as Ubuntu does not run on my system, let alone install. Any debian based distro kernel panics during install, as does slackware. I use Suse due to this, so have not seen the image.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:03:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (DrillSgt)CommentsRE: Well they would have to speed it up a bithttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145861
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145861Until we see exactly what gets shipped I guess we will be left thinking that EVERYTHING will be on 'C'. This is not ideal but as the great god microsoft says this is how it must be then that is how it must be...
I expect there will be a lot of scope post install for 'fixing' the OOTB restrictions & Limits.
Personally, I would like to be able to have "Program Files" in its entirety on a separate drive by default but I'm probably in a minority of 1 here.

The capability to perform custom configurations has been around for some time via unattended install. If not using that, you could manually move Program Files or Documents and Settings directories post-install and use junction points to refer to the location of those directories. The latter method must be performed in Safe Mode.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:16:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (n4cer)CommentsI dunnohttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145936
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145936I'm a bit skeptical as to how well a Windows install can adapt on, on the fly, to varying hardware. If past releases are an indication, there's no way this is going to work right. Also, don't most people get a machine with Windows preinstalled? These typically come with some piece of crap image cd from the vendor anyway, not an actual Windows cd. Appears to me that this won't really be helpful to that many folks.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:37:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (kernelpanicked)CommentsRE[2]: Excellenthttp://www.osnews.com/thread?145940
http://www.osnews.com/thread?145940DragonFlyBSD has been using this technique since the 1.0 release a year or two ago.

Ubuntu 6.06 Desktop CDs use this technique.

Kanotix and Knoppix have been using this technique for quite a while.

The FreeBSD 5.x and 6.x install CDs do something very similar, although not quite a "copy the CD to the harddrive" (the install CD comprises a full, live, CLI version of the OS, as well as compressed tarballs of the same bits).

IOW, this is not all that new. It's been used by several different projects over the years.Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:47:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (phoenix)CommentsRE: Excellenthttp://www.osnews.com/thread?146017
http://www.osnews.com/thread?146017Oddly enough, where I work, 'reuse' and 'learning from others' and 'moving on from past mistakes' and 'adapting to current requirements' are all valued.

Microsoft certainly DO innovate, they have a huge R&D capability - one of the problems is that its focussed on getting product out of the door hence the bizarre number of database access technologies, for example. But they brought ODBC out and Sun followed with JDBC, they brought DCOM and DTS and Sun countered, and there are other examples.

You can't seriously expect them NOT to react to trends for addon system components, garbage collected languages, GL accelerated UIs etc can you?

I'm generally grateful to Microsoft. I got screwed over by them on OS/2, but in the year when I payed through the nose for a Sparc5 clone and a Sun C++ developer license, my MSDN Universal subscription cost *less* than the Sun C++ compiler with a deficient compiler and a half-baked UI builder, and comparing Universal's goody-box to the Sun package left a bad taste in the mouth. And as for the price-performance of the Sun, well, lets not go there. (Still got it, though it runs NetBSD now.)

Microsoft have done a lot to commoditize development products, systems software and the like so that its affordable to most developers, and even if you much prefer the current open tools, its worth remembering that Mircosoft did this, not IBM, Sun or Novell. Or RMS.

We all cherry-pick what Microsoft does - and vice versa. Its competition, right?Tue, 25 Jul 2006 03:33:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (jmansion)Commentsre: ubuntuhttp://www.osnews.com/thread?146022
http://www.osnews.com/thread?146022What other OS uses this technique to install? To my knowledge neither OSS or Mac OSX installs this way

BeOS used it, it just booted from cd and copied
the files over... only the image wasn't compressed
and that was in 1998 way before ubuntuTue, 25 Jul 2006 04:11:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (gfx1)CommentsRE: Antitrust paradisehttp://www.osnews.com/thread?146227
http://www.osnews.com/thread?146227Okay, I'll bite. What does WIM or URGE have to do with Microsoft, except for the fact that the software was written for use on windows? These are not Microsoft companies. OneCare is Microsoft, but not the other 2.

According to the article, WIM is Microsoft's new installation program for Windows, so I think it is from Microsoft.

As for URGE, even though the service may belong to MTV the issue is that Windows Media Player 11 comes with the service pre-installed. The antitrust concern here is that other music stores may no longer be on an "equal" footing compared to URGE, depending on how deeply it is integrated with WMP11.Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:30:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (davidiwharper)Comments